Hank Kalet

Consider today’s ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court to be a half-full glass. In upholding President Barack Obama’s signature legislative success, the Affordable Care Act, it allowed the expansion of health coverage to about 15 million more Americans than had been covered in the past.

But in doing so, it allowed to stand a flawed reform that will expand the power of the health insurance companies, does little to address costs or improve health outcomes and still leaves an estimated 20 million uncovered.

The rationale behind so-called Obamacare is relatively simple, as described by Robert Scheer in Truthdig (in a column critical of the contortions being performed by Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney):

The issue faced by the court was the same on the federal level as it was on the state level; if the public, through its government, must ultimately bear the cost of caring for the uninsured—as would be so in any society possessed of even a modicum of shared social responsibility—then it can vote to levy taxes to finance that effort.

In accepting this argument, the court majority — which included conservative Chief Justice John Roberts — added balance to a badly imbalanced equation. The mandate expands the insurance pool, and shifts the cost of coverage to health-care users, rather than having the larger taxpaying public pick up the cost. Scheer, to be clear, has been critical of the Obama healthcare plan. Obama, he wrote last week,

limited his ambition to what Big Pharma and the insurance giants would accept as “reform” in a system that they had so successfully exploited. Obamacare is a faux reform born of opportunism, as was Romney’s original version: Play ball with those who have profited most from the run-up of medical costs and expect them to make it more affordable.

Two dynamics doomed the experiment. First, the new Democratic president wanted to launch a bold progressive program, but rather than channel the spirit of Franklin Delano Roosevelt to address the economic crisis that he inherited, he continued the bailouts begun under George W. Bush and fixed on health care reform instead of the financial pain being suffered by average Americans.

The second dynamic that undercut the health care bill was an overeagerness on the part of the new White House operatives to collaborate with the profiteers in the very industry targeted by reform.

Real reform, Scheer points out, would build upon Medicare, which has been remarkably successful even given the built-in cost issues it faces because its insurance pool is limited to older Americans, who require a greater amount of care.

Let me humbly suggest that as an alternative to a mandatory system rejected by the majority, we return to the idea of covering most people by attracting them to quality public and private programs through consumer choice, and that one of those choices be a version of the public option we now offer seniors. It’s called Medicare and it works splendidly.

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders agrees, praising today’s decision but making it clear that it should be viewed only as a first small step toward real change, as he told John Nichols in The Nation.

“In my view, while the Affordable Care Act is an important step in the right direction and I am glad that the Supreme Court upheld it, we ultimately need to do better,” the independent senator says. “If we are serious about providing high-quality, affordable healthcare as a right, not a privilege, the real solution to America’s health care crisis is a Medicare-for-all, single-payer system. Until then, we will remain the only major nation that does not provide health care for every man, woman and child as a right of citizenship.”

Obamacare is not going to get us there, but Medicare-for-All will. Progressives should take a day or two to rejoice over today’s ruling, but then get back to work fixing our broken health-system.

• Send me an e-mail.
• Read poetry at The Subterranean.
• Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

The “Fast and Furious” debacle should have been nothing more than a footnote in the annals of the Justice Department.

It was a dubious policy that was badly executed and led to the firing of some low-level employees. Congress is right to investigate, though the full-on assault that this has turned into, fueling wall-to-wall Fox News coverage, offers a glimpse into the depredations of our political culture. The GOP wants to damage the president. Attorney General Eric Holder obliges by being less than forthcoming. The Republicans pounce and Contempt of Congress charges follow. The president reacts with a flimsy declaration of executive privilege, turning a minor blip into a full-bore constitutional battle.

Let me be clear: The GOP is overplaying this failure into a scandal, though they are right to investigate how the whole thing went down. Holder should cooperate, but the GOP needs to be respectful of him and his office, something the party has seemed unwilling to be. And, finally, the president should stay out of it. There is no privilege here and Congress has an investigative responsibility under the constitution. As Jennifer Rubin, who writes the Post’s Right Turn blog, points out,

The defense of Obama’s flimsy executive privilege claim is bad politics and bad law (unlike Obama’s immigration edict, which is good politics and bad law). The impulse in politics is to circle the wagons whenever “your side” is attacked. Hence the left-wing blogosphere and congressional Democrats, who regard Republican executive imperialism as akin to an anti-democratic coup, find nothing wrong with the administration’s stonewalling. This is the triumph of political partisanship over principle. Liberals certainly don’t believe in the flimsy use of executive privilege, except, of course, if Obama is wielding the privilege and there’s an election coming up.

I’m not at all impressed with the argument that Obama is entitled to stiff Congress because House Republicans are playing politics. That sure wasn’t the Watergate or Iran-Contra or Valerie Plame standard. Democrats wanted to get Nixon, Reagan and Bush in those instances, but that partisan motive wasn’t germane, was it?

This hyper-partisanship, which has infected both parties (though the GOP’s partisan fever runs much hotter), is like sugar in the gas tank of American democracy. Along with the obscene amount of money and lack of accountability for donors, government has ground to a halt at the hands of politicians more concerned about their party brand than making things better for Americans.

• Send me an e-mail.
• Read poetry at The Subterranean.
• Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

The latest from The Tent City Project blog: “Ledger editorial gets it right on housing.”

We now officially have two budget plans on the table in New Jersey. Unfortunately, neither plan accepts the state’s fiscal and economic realities.

On the one side, we have the budget proposed by the governor, which continues with his goal of making life easier for those with money. The centerpiece of his plan is a 10 percent income tax cut that would help most those with the most.

On the other side, we have a nominally better Democratic plan that adds a small amount to programs for those in need and includes its own tax cut — a property tax credit that is likely to help those in the middle.

On both sides, however, we have a willful refusal to abide by the basics of smart budgeting.

Despite their wariness over Christie’s revenue figures, the Democrats’ budget would spend nearly all of the money the governor expects to come in, and they are relying on those estimates rather than cutting spending based on the less optimistic OLS forecast.

“It’s hypocritical,” state Sen. Kevin O’Toole (R-Essex) said. “They criticize the revenue estimates, then use them to build a budget.”

Senate Democrats also said they could produce $140 million in new savings, but restless Republicans questioned Sarlo when he said the money would come from more aggressive debt collections at the state Treasury and adjustments to several accounts that never spend their allotted money.

What do I mean by smart budgeting? As anyone who has dealt with their own budgets knows, you never use the most optimistic revenue forecasts. You always assume the worst. If revenue then comes in at the higher level, you have a surplus. If you shoot high and the numbers come in low, you have a shortfall and have to scramble — which is what we’ve been doing the last couple of years.

New Jersey residents deserve a more honest approach to the budget — and not the false bravado and pseudo-straighttalk we get from Christie or the Democrats.

The civil war in Syria — and, yes, it is a civil war — is entering a new phase, if a story in The New York Times today can be believed. Syria has become a proxy war between the United States and Russia.

On the one hand, we have the United States aiding rebel groups, helping direct the flow of arms and weighing the need to directly provide weapons — and fighters? — to rebel groups; on the other, we are loudly criticizing Russia for its alliance with the Syrian government and the arms it is providing.

No doubt, Syria is engaged in a brutal crackdown. No doubt, the rebels are at a disadvantage. And no doubt, Russia is hip deep in the violence because it has been shipping arms to the government.

But arming them is not the way to fix this. Instead, it will set up a new proxy war in the region between Russia and the U.S. with Russia seeking to defend its influence in a volatile region.

Working with Russia to end the flow of arms into Syria and convincing Russia and China to work through United Nations to end the fighting has to be exhausted before anything else is placed on the table.

Even then, the military option should be kept locked away, avoided at all costs.